A lot of programs can’t deal with the “smart quotes” gcc prints in it’s errors. If you have one program calling gcc and parsing the output, you might see something like:
foo.h:45: error: expected âââ}âââ at end of output
One fix I’ve found for this is to change the locale gcc uses for localization. You can do this using the LC_ALL environment variable (see the gcc man page). Setting its value to “C” normalizes the output to standard ASCII. In bash that’s:
export LC_ALL=C
One feature I’ve come to rely on in Visual Studio is it selects the currently active file in the project explorer. By default, SlickEdit doesn’t have this functionality, but you can add it yourself. I found some kindred spirits on the SlickEdit forums that wanted the same behavior. Just add the code on the first page for showInProject() to a new .e file, then append the code on the second page for _switchbuf_auto_showInProject() to the bottom, load the .e file from the Macro -> Load Module menu, and you’re set!
This is the result of years of rigorous interviews while I was “embedded” with game programmers from many different backgrounds. I found that SPU (the PS3 coprocessor instruction set) programmers by far have the largest ego, but not necessarily the most desirable job. Shader programmers have the perceived “coolest” jobs in the industry but don’t have quite the same ego as SPU programmers. PS3 game programmers believe they are better than Xbox 360 programmers, but Xbox 360 programmers have a more desirable job because their games reach a wider audience. PSP game programmers are a bit of an anomaly because they believe the work they do is very challenging, but no one in the industry particularly wants to make PSP games. Mobile, Flash, and iPhone programmers are at the bottom of both ends of the spectrum: their jobs are neither desirable or carry much ego.
Bandai recently announced the Tuttuki Bako, a game device where you stick your finger in it to play games.
This concept supplied nearly an endless source of comedy for a coworker and I this morning. Here’s a few of the software titles we thought of they should make for the system:
Tap Tap Revolution
Ultimate Dominoes
Nose Pick Hero
Paper Football 2009
Pro Booger Flick 2009
Scratch Master 2000
Finger Puppet Machinima CS3
Super Finger Gundam: Operation Index
Cooking Mama: Warm Tortilla
Trauma Center: Apply Pressure
Finger DJ
Keep your eyes peeled for Construction Zone, an engineering / problem solving game currently under development for iPhone by a friend of mine, Doug Beck.
If you can’t wait for the iPhone version (or don’t have an iPhone) you can download a tech-demo for PC. Check it out!
Last year I posted an article titled “Use Google to factcheck Zeitgeist,” where I used search results to investigate the accuracy of statements in the movie Zeitgeist. My investigation was only partly serious–mostly tongue-in-cheek–but that didn’t stop somebody from taking it too seriously in the comments section:
“looking up general words on google disproves nothing, i myself am unsure of how much zeitgeist may lie or bend the truth, but don’t think for a second doin twenty minutes worth of research negates all arguments made within the movie.“
Hey.. This is the Internet(s)! Anyone can do twenty minutes of research, blog it, and claim it supports their argument. Step off!
But it got be thinking: What other specific searches can we perform and distort to make broad generalizations? For example, what of the candidates in this 2008 election? Can we determine who is a liar, a cheat, or a fraud using Google? Let’s see..
mccain liar: 4,890,000 results
obama liar: 5,250,000 results
mccain honest: 10,700,000 results
obama honest: 13,900,000 results
Clearly we’ve learned that both candidates are liars, but they’re also honest, and they’re more honest than they are liars. Obama is more of a liar than McCain, but he’s also more honest… FASCINATING!
Who has more skeletons in their closet?
mccain troubled past: 332,000 results
obama troubled past: 8,040,000 results
Uh-oh! Who would be better for foreign policy?
mccain diplomacy: 2,580,000 results
obama diplomacy: 2,710,000 results
Pretty close there. But what really matters is who is better on “the issues”:
mccain issues: 56,400,000 results
obama issues: 77,700,000 results
Big lead there for Obama. And finally, who has the better Internet marketing gurus:
mccain: 150,000,000 results
obama: 210,000,000 results
This made my day! My retro-themed iPhone game Vector Blaster was honored as being one of the “Top 100 Apps and Games of 2008” according to the 2009 iPod + iPhone buyers’ guide published by iLounge.com.
The list has 48 games on it, so I guess you could say it’s one of the Top 48 Games of 2008. 🙂
BailoutSleuth.com is blogging the bailout. I’m sure this is a noble and necessary endeavor, but let me pick one statement from their website, take it out of context and then go on a tangent:
BailoutSleuth believes that transparency is vital to the success of the taxpayer-funded bailout program.
I totally disagree. What fueled the CDS market? What fueled the mortgage-backed securities market? Why did the corporate paper market work? OPAQUENESS! The market is driven 90% by perception: hunches, rumors, intuition. Without calculated risk the markets wouldn’t work. The fact that so many people got rich over the last decade with these instruments is because no one had any idea what was really going on! In the end it was a miserable failure, but it sure was great while it was good, right?
If we want to get out of this mess quickly, I think a certain amount of mystery and opacity is crucial. As I’ve argued before, all that really needs to happen to get the economy to recover is investors need to be led to believe that it will in fact recover, and we’ll get the snowball rolling again.
Ha! Terrible analogy. But probably appropriate.
New MacBook’s announced today.. I’m extremely skeptical of the glass touchpad. I love the iPhone, but I can’t stand using it for a long period of time. Sliding my finger around on a greasy glass surface starts to get tiring after a while. My fingers get tired and my wrists get sore if I use the iPhone for more than 15-20 minutes at a time… Without a rough surface beneath my finger I’m concerned the glass touchpad on the MacBook will be a similar experience.
They’ve also gone to all-glass displays… no matte finish anymore. As a programmer, I *loath* glass screens. Sure they look great for video games, Photoshop and video editing, but text editing is hard on your eyes for any reasonable duration of time. I can’t tolerate them.
I’m waiting for Apple to re-release the old PowerBook G4 12″ with an Intel Duo and 9600M video.. I wonder if someone can gut mine and do the upgrade for me.. 🙂
UPDATE: I finally got a chance to go hands-on with the new MacBook Pro. The touchpad, to my pleasant surprise, doesn’t suck. I could definitely get used to it.
The display however… glossy finish… I couldn’t get used to that. :-/
“Disastrous consequences”
“Martial law in America”
This is what we were told would happen if the government did not step in to bail out the lending markets. But all we’ve seen so far is a crisis of confidence, and a few banks that over leveraged themselves have either gone bankrupt or have been swallowed up by bigger banks. Am I naive to think that these aren’t necessarily bad things to have happened? Where’s the disaster? (I think Fanny/Freddie was a special case due to the legal framework they were built under; the government did the right thing by nationalizing them).
Yea, I’ve lost a lot of money these last couple of weeks. My retirement accounts have plummeted.. but they’ll come back. And hopefully on the up swing I’ll make it back plus some. Optimism? 🙂
I don’t consider myself to be a “free market fundamentalist”–I do believe that certain types of regulation are essential to keeping a free market a fair market. But everyone now seems to be calling for more regulation. Isn’t the market performing on itself right now the ultimate self regulation? Organizations that made bad investments are being punished by their shareholders pulling out their shares. Unfortunately, organizations that didn’t make bad investments need to operate in the same market as organizations that did, so they’re being dragged down with them… But that’s not necessarily a bad thing, it means for investors there are some real deals to be had right now on the stock market!
At this point my belief is the only thing the government needs to do is encourage more transparency in the markets. Companies that created these complicated mortgage-backed securities, leveraged instruments, etc., need to expose to their investors what they’re doing. You could argue that they didn’t even know what they were doing, but after this crisis people are gonna be on the look-out for these types of convoluted instruments and will be a lot more skeptical of them.
There have been comments coming from across the globe by various world leaders admonishing the US for “creating” the current financial crisis. Excuse me? A huge portion of this country’s stocks are owned by foreign organizations! If you don’t like our markets you don’t have to invest in them! I actually think the rest of the world’s markets crashing has more to do with the US trade deficit with these nations than it does with anything we did within the US. A lot of nations put their exports all in one basket..